In the above video, Joseph Tsar talked about how to think clearly. Here’s a summary:

Consume Less Bite-Sized Media

Short-form content (TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels) is undoubtedly the current trend now. It can cater to anyone who has just few minutes of free time to spare due to their busy schedule. However, this leads to us having a shorter attention span. We start to find long videos boring, even though they could potentially be more useful. So it’s important to retrain our brains to maintain a longer attention span and absorb information from longer videos or articles.

Exercise Mental Discipline

There’s so much information to consume on the Internet, and this could potentially lead to us being “lazy”. We start parroting what others are saying without really processing and evaluating the information itself. As Joseph mentioned, this leads to a “society full of people who have a very surface-level understanding of often very strong opinions”. We have to do the due diligence of researching and internalizing the pre-processed information instead of blindly adopting someone else’s understanding of it (which may not necessarily be correct). This would also train our thought process, allowing us to express idea more clearly to others (since we have gone through the step-by-step process of arriving at the conclusion in our heads). We would have more confidence in delivering the ideas as we have a better understanding of them. When we just blindly follow someone else’s understanding, we find it harder to defend it ourselves as our understanding becomes limited to what we heard from that person who shares it. So whenever we find our brains being lazy, remember to confront ourselves and start thinking through all the ideas in our heads. If you find yourself disagreeing or challenging someone else’s understanding, it also shows that you are actively using your brain to evaluate the information. We could potentially help correct their misunderstanding or they could potentially help correct our misunderstanding (or sometimes both can be correct and you get a fresh perspective). Either way, it’s a win-win for society!

More Information Output

We are constantly consuming information on a daily basis, but we don’t output it enough. This leads to information overload in our brains, which manifests as brain fog. Some people unconsciously sort and process this information in their heads by having an internal dialogue with themselves. But for most of us, we need a way to output information to organize all the scattered ideas in our brains and process them clearly. Having a conversation with others is arguably the best way to output information because you could receive feedback that might alter your understanding or opinion about something. The more time we talk about a certain topic with others, the more confident we become, as each conversation reinforces our understanding of the matter. Writing about the topic or making videos about it is another popular way to output information. It forces us to strengthen our chain of thoughts and discover the best way to deliver the message to others.

Some Reflections

I am amazed at how accurately Joseph describes the problem. I guess he has done his due diligence in processing the information, which enables him to deliver the idea in the best way possible. It’s something I have thought about in the past, but I still struggle to articulate my opinions sometimes. I realize that I like to express my thoughts a lot and sometimes even feel a little embarrassed for talking about them too much when the receiving end is not as interested in the topic. That’s why I find joy in writing and journaling, where I can sort through the information and ideas that I have. I don’t consider myself a good writer though, as I find my writing rather boring (also English is not my native language). But I would not let that stop me from expressing my thoughts through the written form, and I believe it will improve the more I write.